Definitions of Writing Period .

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CHAPTER 2. REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE

This chapter presents the theories related to the research problems. They cover the definitions of writing, the aspects of writing, descriptive paragraph, definition of pictures, the types of picture used in writing, the advantages and disadvantages of using pictures as media in writing, the procedures of using individual pictures in writing, and research hypothesis. They will be explained respectively in the following sections.

2.1 Definitions of Writing

Writing is one of the important language skills that should be learnt by the students in many levels from junior high school, senior high school and university levels. In this case, the students should be able to express everything in their mind as an idea and feeling in the written form. They may share their knowledge and their own experience through writing. There are many different definitions about writing stated by some experts in language teaching. According to Harmer 2004:79 writing is a form of communication to deliver through or to express feeling through written form. In addition, Chaffee 1999:5 say that writing is an active, purposeful, process that uses system of written symbol for thinking and communicating. It means that through writing, the studennts can express ideas, feeling, and experiences to convey a specific purpose. The other experts also have different definionts about what writing is. According to Oshima and Hogue 2007:15 writing is a process of creating the ideas, 8 organizing the ideas, writing a rough draft and polishing rough draft by editing it and making revisions. It is supported by Langan 2008a:12 that writing is a process of continuing discovery that involves series of steps, not an automatic process. In other words, writing is a thinking process which involves some processes and considerable period of time to express everything in their mind in the written form.

2.2 Aspects of Writing

There are five aspects of writing that will be assessed in this research. They are content, organization, grammar, vocabulary and mechanics. Each aspect of writing will be reviewed in the following parts. 2.2.1 Content Content is one of the aspects that important to be considered to make the reader understand the ideas and the message deliver clearly through written form. According to Langan 2008a:8, the first concern in good writing should be content. It leads to the central idea in the topic sentence. Because of that, it is important for the students to make a good topic sentence that has a clear central idea to control the contents of the paragraph. Content refers to the topic and its explanation or elaboration, discussion, evaluation, and conclusion, Leo et al. 2007:1. In other words, it is called as the body of writing. Therefore, the content of paragraph can be called good if it has a clear main idea that can control the supporting sentences of the paragraph.

2.2.2 Organization

Organization in a paragraph is one aspect of writing that has intention to make a paragraph easier to read. According to Brannan 2003:87, all writing that is easy to read follows an organizational strategy. In writing a good paragraph, the students should consider and concern with this organizational skill of paragraph that covers 9 unity and coherence. Those unity and coherence play an important role in writing a good paragraph. The unity and coherence will be reviewed in detail in the following parts. a. Unity In organizing a good paragraph, unity is an important element while writing. Every good paragraph has unity. It means that in each paragraph, only one main idea is discussed. If the writers start to discuss a new idea, begin a new paragraph Oshima and Hogue, 2007:67. One topic in a paragraph becomes the characteristic of unity and supported by the supporting sentences that are related with the main idea in the paragraph. Savage and Shafiei 2007:12 confirm that the supporting sentences must support or explain the controlling idea with examples, details, steps or definition and it can make your writing rich and interesting. b. Coherence Beside unity, another of good paragraph is should be coherent. Coherence means that the ideas and the sentences should flow smoothly allowing the readers to follow its progression with ease Mc Whorter, 2010:149. Beside that, Savage and Shafiei 2007:16, the supporting details are organized so that information that goes together and appears together. Therefore, a paragraph has coherence when all of the sentences in that paragraph are well organize that the evidence seems to flow smoothly how well an idea can be expressed through a sentence that leads to another idea and sticks together to support the main idea. According to McWhorter 2010:149, transitional words and phrases help the reader follow a spatial arrangement and see how details relate to each other. It is supported by Bram 1995:22 who confirms that to achieve coherence, the writer needs to use the transitions, such as, however, although, finally, and nevertheless. It means that a paragraph can make coherence by using transitional words to connect the sentences in the paragraph. In this research, the students’ paragraph writing were evaluated from the aspects of writing organization coherence and unity. 10 2.2.3 Vocabulary Words are the basic tool that is very important to use in writing a good paragraph. According to Richards and Rodgers 2001:37 say that vocabulary is one of the most important aspects for foreign language. That is why everybody who learns English or a certain foreign language should know the words. The mastery of vocabulary can support them when they are communicating to people in the form of writing and translating the meaning of words. Elder 2007:73 states that having more vocabulary will help the writers to state their ideas more precisely in writing. In other words, if the wrong words are used in their writing, the readers will not get the writers’ messages. Therefore, by mastering more vocabulary it could make the students choose the appropriate words for their writing and it would be interpreted by the reader easily. Vocabulary is divided into some classes. According to Hatch and Brown 1995:218 the terms used to classify words based on their functional categories are called parts of speech which include nouns, verbs, adverbs, prepositions, pronouns, conjunctions, articles and interjections. Furthermore, being able to recognize these parts of speech can help the students write effectively and become a critical evaluator of their own work. 2.2.4 Grammar Grammar is important while writing. It is because grammar is set of the rules that need to construct the sentences in a good sense to make it understandable for the readers. Fairbrain Winch 1996:108 state that grammar is a set of rules to help you to construct sentences that make sense and acceptable in English. According to Thornbury 1999:1, grammar is the study of the forms or structures in language. Further, he says that grammar is descriptions of the rules sentences are formed. Therefore, grammar concerns to the structure of sentence. Bram 1995:25 says that the lack of grammar makes the writing hard to be interpreted. Thus, the students should write correct and appropriate words to make good sentences with 11 grammatically ordered to make the reader does not get difficulties to understand what the writer’s mean.

2.2.5 Mechanics

According to Heaton 1988:135, mechanic skill is the ability to use correctly the convention of written language. Moreover, Langan 2008:86 says that a paper that contains a number of errors in mechanics will not make a favorable impression on readers. Appropriate in chosen use punctuations will help the reader easier to understand what will be communicated by the writer Fairbrain Winch 1996:81. It means, if there are many mistakes done by the writer in mechanics the reader might not understand the message that the writer wants to deliver in a sentence and make the meaning ambiguous. According to Harmer 2004:44, there are some mechanical components in writing. These include spellings, punctuations, and capitalizations. There are many kind of punctuation marks. Accoding to Mc Whorter 2010:781-797 explains punctuation are as follows.

a. Period .

Use to mark the end of the sentence that makes a statement, gives an instruction, or includes indirect question. Example: Statement  Jack Collin is the amazing person I have ever met. Instruction  Use that sun block as possible during the summer. Indirect Question  The old woman want to know where the wallet was found. b. Question mark ? Use a question mark to end a sentence that asks a direct question. Example: How are you today? c. Exclamation point Example: I scored three goals at the soccer game 12 d. Commas , A comma , is used to separate parts of sentence from one another. There are several functions of comma in sentences: 1. Use comma before coordinating word and, but, for, nor, or, so, yet that joins two independent clauses. Example: My mother’s kitchen is not big, but it is warm and comfortable. 2. Use comma to separate three or more items in a series. Example: Hiking, travelling, and reading a novel are just a few of his hobbies. 3. Use a comma to separate two or more adjectives that modify the same noun when they are not joined by coordinating noun. Example: Imam buys a big, beautiful, luxurious house for his parent. 4. Use a comma to separate introductory words, phrases, and clauses from the rest of a sentence. Example: Introductory word  above, the sky was a mass of clouds Introductory phrases  at the start of the research, the researcher were optimistic success. Introductory clause  If you are ill, you should see a doctor. 5. Use comma to set off a nonrestrictive word group from the rest of sentence. Example: Most people either love or hate fruitcake, which is a traditional holiday desert. 6. Use comma to set off parenthetical expressions. Example: Furthermore, he says that writing is one of important skill that student should be mastered. 7. Use comma with date, addresses, title and numbers. Example: Imam graduated on November 9, 2013. e. Colon : Use a colon to introduce a list or a series. Example: In my pencil case, I put several items: two pencils, a sharpener, a ruler, an eraser and three pens. 13 f. Quotation marks “ ” Quotation mark is used to mark words used as words in your sentence. Example: She said, “Stand up.” No, thank you,” she replied. In dialogue, place quotation marks around each speaker’s utterance. g. Apostrophes ‘ Apostrophe is used to indicate ownership. Example: That silver pajero is Imam’s car. Capitalization is one of the aspects of mechanics and the students also should concern about this. To make writing effective and meaningful, one has to know the rules of English capitalization. The meaning of the sentence might change as well without appropriate capitalization. According to McWhorter 2010: 803-804, the words that the first letter should be capitalized in working a piece of writing for examples, a. The pronoun I Example: He went to school while I was working. b. The first word of a sentence Example: Writing is important skill to be learned c. Names of specific places Example: Mount Bromo, Probolinggo d. Names of days, month, and specific days Example: Wednesday, October, Christmas e. Names of specific group of people nationalities, races, and ethnic group,languages, and religions Examples: British, Japanese, French, Christ f. Names of subjects with course numbers Example: Listening II g. Names of specific organization business, clubs, schools Example: Jember University 14 h. Title of compositions, books, stories, magazine, newspaper, plays, poems, and movies Examples: Pictures for Language Learning, Writing English Language Tests. The other mechanic skill is spelling. In writing, spelling plays an important mechanic skill should be concerned by the students because the wrong spelling can confuse the readers. It is supported by Farbrain and Winch 1996:100, poor of spelling can make meaning ambiguous and nonsense sentences. In this research, mechanics dealing with the use of punctuation, capitalization, and spelling were evaluated for the students’ paragraph writing.

2.3 Descriptive Paragraph